Jade Cuttle, a PhD student at the Faculty, recently appeared on BBC Radio 3’s Sunday Feature. In the programme, she retraced the fenland journeys of composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and reflected on his enduring ties to Cambridge.  Jade was selected as a BBC New Generation Thinker through the Arts and Humanities Research Council scheme that brings academic research to national radio.

The broadcast centred on In the Fen Country from 1904, one of Vaughan Williams’s earliest acknowledged works. Following his route along the River Cam and out into the marshland—from Cambridge to Ely—Jade considered what this landscape offers to artists past and present. She spoke with her former undergraduate supervisor, Dr Alyson Tapp (Clare College), about Vaughan Williams’s attachment to the fens and her current PhD supervisor, Professor Robert Macfarlane (Emmanuel College), to explore the region’s complex reputation.

Reflecting on the wide skies and striking flatness of the fen country, Jade suggested that its openness creates space for ideas to take root. Her feature highlights Vaughan Williams’s legacy as a Cambridge student and invites today’s scholars to look beyond the city’s courts and cloisters to the landscapes just beyond.

You can explore more of Jade’s work at www.jadecuttle.co.uk and follow her updates on social media at @JadeCuttle.